


The Unreckonables

by mAd_parnes



Category: Criminal Minds, Supernatural
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Crossover, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Underage, Interrogation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-02-19 18:24:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2398346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mAd_parnes/pseuds/mAd_parnes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story is set in a not too distant future of SPN, but has been written before Season 9, so it turned out to be AU.<br/>It is AU for Criminal Minds too, because Prentiss returned to the BAU. </p><p>They caught him. After ten years on the FBI's radar they stumbled over him. All because of a mistake and the improved quality of cellphone photos. They reluctantly accepted the praise from all sides, while in truth every last one of them had firmly believed both Winchester brothers were dead...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to Michelle, our wonderful beta. Who is working currently on Chapter 2

 

 

**The Unreckonables**

 

 

 

by Joseph Dillinger & Francis Sutton

 

 

 

 

“All things truly wicked start from an innocence.”

_~Ernest Hemingway_

 

 

 

They caught him. After ten years on the FBI's radar they stumbled over him. All because of a mistake and the improved quality of cellphone photos. They reluctantly accepted the praise from all sides, while in truth every last one of them had firmly believed both Winchester brothers were dead.

The Winchesters never even made it into VICAP, their profile being a half plucked chicken, they had been no real use for reference. Too much left in the dark, the case gone cold too many times, too many units on it and every new detail overwrote verified theories. Any investigator's nightmare. Luckily they were shot in their last murder spree, right?

Wrong.

Rossi's eyes proved to be better than his bitching about them suggested, because he made out the aged face in the background of a picture on their fourth victim's cellphone.

After that, finding him had been as easy as picking up take out.

Small town. One motel. And a '67 Chevy Impala parked right in front of the room of one Duane Allman.

The owner of the motel had checked him in and recognized him from his mugshot. He informed them, that Mister Allman had come in early last night and had not left his room since then.

Their former case solved, they had all time and resources to spend on this arrest.

The ease with how they found him had not lured them into false safety, if anything it made them nervous. So, when the Sheriff asked why one man entitled the maximum effort an arrest could be, Hotch glared and Rossi gave him lip. After all, the man was exaggerating. They were short a satellite, a SWAT team, poison gas and the bomb squad to make it the maximum effort an arrest could be.

Hotch corrected Rossi then and there, that Garcia made sure they were not short a satellite. They had SWAT-trained agents on the team. Their approach minimized the risk to trip any bombs. And poison gas was hopefully a joke of Dave's, Hotch ensured with a glance towards him, and the only thing they had to leave to chance was the question:

Where was the other brother?

They had no answer, even Reid just tilted his head and shrugged it off; they only could instruct the officers and be on alert for the other one.

Because the only two constant things in the Winchester case were the brothers' inability to stay dead and their interdependency. So it did not matter the motel owner swore up and down he only saw one. Where one Winchester brother was, the other was not far away. They made themselves ready for surprises.

A door broken down, they got a surprise. Dean Winchester was not alone. But his brother seemed nowhere in sight.

 

They received little to no resistance from Winchester. But given the company they found him in, his survival instinct probably told him to shut his mouth. Morgan wasted no time to haul him out of the kid's sight, not too gently.

Big eyes studied the rest of the team, lurking under a mop of hair, the rest of the boy hid under rumpled covers. No fear, just big eyes, taking in these intruders of the early morning, a perfect picture of curiosity. The boy was too old not too understand what was going on, what their FBI issued gear meant, yet there was no emotion in his face, not fear, nor the relief of being rescued. An unaffected manner in times of stress spoke a sad tale of this child's experiences.

Their unit chief communicated silently their advance to this new development. Rossi and him would see if Morgan needed any help with Winchester. They took the rest of the officers with them, so that Prentiss, JJ and Reid were left alone with the boy.

While JJ did the gentle introduction, her name, she worked for the FBI, Prentiss noted the boy's hands were not visible. Sure from their perspective it seemed as if he clung to the blankets, but the boy gave her the creeps. No reason to underestimate someone just because they looked harmless. He could conceal a weapon and wait to strike out.

“I would like you to come outside with me, okay?” JJ asked and drew nearer. Some of the strain left the boy and when he let go of the covers, in his crouching position, they fell to his waist. Reid averted his eyes and Prentiss changed her discomfort of suspecting him to be armed, to another.

Because the only thing be boy had concealed had been his nudity.

“Okay,” he answered JJ in an even voice and waved his hands towards the floor. “Could you hand me my jeans?”

He accepted his jeans with an awkward little smile. While he struggled to pull them on under the covers JJ tried to give him privacy, but it was obvious, that the boy was bare naked.

Fully clothed, his shoelaces tied, JJ asked him, if he had a jacket and something strange happened. He looked at her contemplative. She reasoned with him, that it was cold outside, she could get him a blanket if he had no jacket. His thoughts bloomed into a smile and he shook his head.

“Thank's, Mam. But I have a jacket.” Polite, collected. All three of them thought the same thing, the child's behavior did not match with his trauma.

And then he asked JJ something to ice the cake,

“What you're going to do with my brother?”

 

 

The three of them waited, at the local hospital till they met with Hotch, to break the news.

“We have a problem,” Reid announced. “The boy claims to be Sam Winchester.”

“What are Morgan and Rossi doing with Dean?” Prentiss asked, they should hear about this too; before they questioned him.

“Observing,” Hotch answered, “Is the boy injured?”

“Not on sight,” Prentiss answered.

“And we saw a lot of him,” JJ added. “Hotch he was naked and...”

“Even before the doctors will tell us, we can safely assume Dean Winchester had sexual intercourse with the boy. The smell did not leave much to imagination, just how severe the assault was is hard to tell,” Reid rambled on, “In the bad light we saw no visible bruises on the boy's body and his behavior...”

“Is incongruous for a victim, he must have been with Winchester a long time, other-”, Prentiss said, but Hotch cut her off: “Speculation, I don't want to go there before the boy has been interviewed. JJ, why are you not with him?”

She would have wanted to stay with the boy, but he proved repeatedly to have a knack to throw them off. “He said he would be alright on his own. When he recited the content's of a SAFE kit to me and how it is used, I was a little bit …speechless.”

They had asked if he had been through this procedure before. No.

“He must have lied,” Hotch concluded.

“We thought so too and he must have noticed we do not believe him,” Prentiss told. “Because he dryly stated he spends too much time on Wikipedia.”

Their unit chief took this in, before he asked. “Do you think he will feel threatened by me?”

They shook their heads in unison. “Right now he is in there with two male doctors and a female nurse. Every time we checked in on him he seemed impassively interested in what is happening to him,” JJ explained. “The single 'raw' emotion we got from him was a smile back at the motel.”

“Evoked by what?” Hotch asked and Prentiss answered before JJ could.

“By JJ being motherly.”

 

 

Hotch picked up the documentation forms. No need for the doctors to fill them out when he was here.

He introduced himself to the boy, who introduced himself as Sam Winchester. He did not object, but asked if it was alright for him to stay, or if 'Sam' would prefer JJ to question him.

“Not really,” the boy answered and had a question of his own. “Are you her superior?”

“What makes you think so?” he evaded the answer.

The boy just shrugged and did not ask again.

He asked the boy some of the standardized questions. And some not from the paper.

No, he was not hurt.

No, he was not raped.

No, he felt not dizzy. And many more No's.

No, he did not give consent...“I am twelve, Agent Hotchner,” the boy said worldwise. “The age of consent for the the acts you are imputing is eighteen. If they had happened how could I give consent to them?”

Hotch knew seasoned lawyers who wouldn't be able to turn a logical snare around like the boy just had.

It deemed ironic, that seconds after the boy behaved so worldwise, Hotch was reminded that he sat across a child. As the boy flinched away from the doctor's touch and yelped.

The doctor caught Hotch's eye as if too defend himself.

But he just marveled at the fight the boy fought to calm himself before anyone could see him for what he was. A scared child. Very skilled in compartmentalization. He did not want JJ here, because she would treat him like a child, no matter how many times he would shock her.

Hotch excused himself. “I will send Agent Jarau to keep you company.” He was out of the door, before the boy could talk back.

“Stay with him,” he ordered JJ. “Do not let him lure you into treating him as an adult. He is stonewalling, he will not be able to do that with you. We need to know his real name.”

 

Dean Winchester. Hotch watched him through the glass.

He was a living piece of history. The first time he had been profiled Elle had been still on the team. Weeks before she was shot, the St. Louis murders landed on his table. He dealt it to Elle, who discarded them after a quick evaluation. Too little information, messy investigation, no alive killer to interview.

Hotch himself would have not remembered the case, but months later another file made it to his table. Evaluation with priority. Hendricksen had scented blood, Dean Winchester was alive and obviously not working alone. Looking back he should have made it their case. But he could not even find someone who did the evaluation with him. The victimology was all over the place, the crimes as well and the rhythm erratic. He could have used some help, like Gideon, who would have taken one look at the pair and asked the right question. Why should Dean be the dominant? He was older, but smaller, lighter, and less intelligent than his brother.

But Gideon had been slowly breaking down.

Reid was on the mend. Or else he would have been of help, because he could have seen the pattern. Could have profiled them mission orientated vigilantes with mythological delusions, before it was more than whiff of intuition.

He had not warmed enough with Prentiss to sit down with her and muse over a case together, just the two of them. That one was on him. He wondered what she would have seen.

Rossi had not been there yet and Morgan was overworked. Rossi would have slowed him down, Morgan would have spurred him on. Both would have changed his pace and given him a different perspective than the one he adopted.

He did it alone and gave a fragmentary profile with the sick feeling Hendricksen would take it too serious.

Which he did, it narrowed his field of vision and the brothers slipped away, twice.

“A bad coffee for your thoughts?” Rossi said handing him a cup.

“I remembered the first time I made the mistake to profile this one.”

“Yeah, tricky bastards these Winchesters. Did an evaluation after Hendricksen's death.”

“I read it. Slightly better than mine.”

“Not worth the paper it's printed on. I didn't take it serious, just did it for Fitch,” Rossi declared. “He recruited Hendricksen, couldn't let go, wanted to know why we lost three good agents to two boy's with a knack for explosives.”

Hotch shook his head and thought, because they constantly underestimated them. Even the last time. To this day he did not understand why there were only two agents sent to stop the Winchesters on their murder road trip 2012. Another two agents lost and the brothers falsely presumed dead. Again.

“You know the first time I profiled a Winchester I was sitting across him,” Rossi stated. He never had told the tale, had not seemed important before. Wouldn't he keep notes of everyday events and consult them from time to time, he would not even remember him anymore.

“John Winchester. Met him in a saloon on the drive home from a case.”

Some roadside shack, having the same charm as it's owner, worn down with an attitude. That woman had been something to remember. No notebook necessary for that. Not many girls looked tired and wicked at the same time. He had flirted, made her compliments for her stew and told her she was too young to be a mother. All swished off her, like she heard it a thousand and one time. Only her little daughter had smiled over his silliness and stayed near him the whole evening.

“He kept to himself, was writing into a journal. I spilled a drink over it,” he told Hotch who listened intently. “He was itching for a fight, my apology be damned. The soldier was still in his movements and it was easy to see that he had killed and had not stopped after the war was over. And then he just dropped it. Like nothing happened. Sat down, refused the drink I wanted to buy him and wrote onto his wet pages. In Latin.”

“And then?” Hotch asked.

“Nothing. I decided to call it a night, he was obviously unstable and would have not liked it to be stared at.” He had told the pigtailed little girl an old Italian fairy tale to draw out her mother's smile. Successfully.

“It seems to be the maxim of handling the Winchesters. Never to observe them long enough to gain any certainty.”

Hotch was right, “But long enough to confuse the hell out of you,” Rossi agreed.

They both silently watched Dean Winchester.

Morgan was in there with him, giving him the silent/judging treatment. Rossi banged heads with the younger agent now and then, but he had to give him: No one delivered wordless disgust with pedophiles harsher than Morgan.

Are you just gonna glare at me whole day, Dean Winchester had asked Dave with faked amusement in the beginning. Later he added, Is this some new white torture, bore the suspect to death?

You are not a suspect, Rossi had told him and left him alone with Morgan.

Since he came back he could tell, Winchester was anything but bored.

Morgan's quiet observation made him uncomfortable. They could see, he was silent himself for two reasons, he knew this game's loser was the one who could not take the silence any longer. And the second reason became more obvious with every time he looked at Morgan avoiding direct eye-contact. Shame. He did not want to talk about how they found him. Half naked after a morning fuck with a twelve year old boy.

He was ripe to be left alone with his thoughts.

Hotch knocked against the glass.

Morgan left the room.

 

They arrived to an agreement towards handling this case after a few minutes on the phone with JJ, Prentiss and Reid. The boy refused to talk to JJ. He still claimed to be Sam Winchester and he would only talk to her superior.

The decision if the Winchester case or the case of the boy should be investigated was easy. The chances to air out the many layers of the Winchester case were slim to non-existent. Especially with only one brother at hand.

The boy's case was fresh and more pressing than old murder cases.

Their unit chief decided he would send Morgan and Rossi in to make Winchester uncomfortable. Between the two of them Winchester would break. Rape of a minor was one of the few crimes he had not committed through all these years. Why now was less interesting than, why not before? But on the other hand, Dean Winchester was the type to brag, not shock. He had not taken pride in the grave robberies. But bombs, breaking and entering, he would talk about. He was not the dominant of the two brothers, the most vile deeds could always be traced back to his younger brother.

“So assuming his brother was out of the picture, what external force had driven him to this new extreme?” Morgan wondered.

And Rossi answered, “That his brother is out of the picture. What if Sam Winchester has died?”

The boy Dean Winchester raised, protected, came to see as an equal and was his only constant in life? Yes, this death could drive a man to do terrible things.

Like recreating his little brother.

“Do you think he knows that the boy is not his brother?” Prentiss asked a question they had no answer to. But it was essential for their approach. Morgan looked at Rossi. “What do you think?”

“Yes, he knows. But it's a guess, I could be wrong and if I am wrong we lose our footing,” he deliberated.

“We play it as if the boy is his brother, he could get on board with the idea and fool us,” Morgan said.

“Let him tell you what he believes,” Reid proposed the only safe way.

 

They failed terribly. Not at the part where they got Dean Winchester to admit he knew the young boy could not be his brother.

But they did not break him. He literally twitched for how uncomfortable they made him, but he would not give them anything. He denied the rape, he would never touch a child like that, no matter how absurd his denial was in the light of the boy's condition, he shut down.

The big guns it was then. He had asked for it, Morgan thought while they briefed Prentiss and JJ.

Afterwards he joined Hotch in the talk with the boy whose name wasn't Sam.

 

“How did you know I am JJ's superior?” Hotch asked. They had agreed on going soft on the boy. Treating him with more care than he inspired. Morgan had not understood what Hotch and Prentiss meant when they said, the boy was not child like.

“I guessed. You wear a suit.” He seemed pretty childlike to Morgan.

“You are very perceptive,” Hotch praised the boy, who accepted it with a Thank you, Sir. He did the Sir's and Mam's faithfully. Maybe it was a hint to his upbringing.

“How did you meet Dean?” Hotch asked. Morgan would only ask questions later, the boy had asked for the superior and while he watched Morgan, he did not engage conversation with him, only with Hotch.

“I know him since ever, I'm his brother,” the boy rolled his eyes as he repeated his statement, then he asked, “When are you letting us go?”

If Hotch did not know better he would say, the boy had changed his tactic. He behaved childlike instead of world-wise since they came in. He tested his theory.

“Why are you asking a question you know the answer to?” he changed his tone to something stern, something reserved for those who tried to fool him. Morgan shifted beside him. “What are you trying to achieve now?” pressed the boy for an answer.

The boy smiled and while Hotch was sure, it was not the smile he had given JJ, it felt real and strong, a show of respect.

“Now we are talking, Agent Hotchner,” the boy said. “I wanted to talk to Miss JJ's superior, because I want to negotiate the release of my brother. I know what it looks like. But he is a good person and should not be treated so poorly. Is there anything I could offer you, so you would consider letting him go?”

The kid had to be joking. Tough talk though, for a twelve year old. “I am not sure you understand,” Morgan began explaining. “Alone what he did to you will make him go prison for a long time. But there are other things he did, a long list of crimes-”

“I know,” the boy not named Sam cut in. “But I am not talking to you. This is a one time offer Agent Hotchner. To clear everything up,” he made dramatic pause. “Drop the charges against my brother and you can ask me any question, I will tell you the whole truth and go to all lengths to prove it.”

“What is the alternative?” Hotch asked, “What if we just talk?”

“Fine, but I gotta warn you,” the boy sounded pissed, “You decline, this the last true thing you will hear from me: You don't want to harm my brother.”

Morgan watched the staring down between Hotch and the kid. Hotch took the threat serious, as if it wasn't just a cry for help from a scared kid. “Even if we could, we would not let Dean Winchester go,” Hotch informed the boy in his steeliest voice. “He would just find the next boy and recreate his brother. Do the same things to him, he did to you.”

“Hotch can I talk to you outside?” his chief had to slow this down, or the kid would shut down on them again.

 

“Is agent Hotchner not coming back?” Sam asked, when Morgan entered again.

“He hears us. But I thought it would be better if we talk first, before you go on negotiating with him”, Morgan said with a smile. He had seen footage of Dean Winchester when he was at ease and charming. He could mimic that. “I mean we both know, you could kick his ass,” he joked. “But you don't have to. We are not going to harm Dean.”

The boy pushed his jaw forward in an angry, helpless gesture. “I know that that's not true. You hate him, because you think he's a chimo.”

Little to say to that.

“Am I not right?” he asked the kid.

“No. He's a good guy,” the boy answered. “A lot like you.” The last statement gave him the shivers. He is just a kid, he told himself, reacting to what he is seeing. “Sam,” he said, “I will call you that till you tell me another name. I need you to understand something,” he addressed it openly, “Dean will not be released. That means he can never hurt you again. But it also means, he cannot do anything for you anymore. Do you understand that?”

The boy looked away and pressed his lips to tight line, he understood, but he did not like it.

“Can you tell me why you need Dean, why you want to go back to him?”

The boy looked far away, a sign of memories. “He would never leave me. And I will never leave him,” simple, like it was a law of nature.

“What is with your other family, don't you want to see them again?”

Deep, honest fear, when these big round eyes sought him out. It was gone in a blink. “I don't have any other Family,” the boy stated. “Dean is my family, he will always be there for me.”

“He can't be anymore, Sam. He is going to prison. You have to tell us who you are, so we can take care of you.”

“Let me go to prison with Dean,” Sam said and grinned. “I have been there before, in '06. Dean and me broke out, ditching your Agent Hendricksen.”

He fell back to old patterns, Morgan did not let him, “This time Dean will go away forever, he will die, like his brother died, his real brother.”

“Dean would never leave me, not even death can stop him.” Certainty. Bone deep. This was more than brainwash, this was born by real emotion.

“I understand, that Dean promised never to leave you like your father did,” Morgan said and Sam narrowed his eyes, part suspicion part dread:

“How do know that?”

Nothing was lost if he told the truth. “Because it had not been your mother, so it had to be your father who abandoned you. Do do you still have a mother, Sam?”

The boy shrugged a No. “Died when I was a baby.”

“That was Sam Winchesters mother, but you remember your mother don't you?”

“Nahh, same story as Sam's,” he said nonchalantly. “No mom, dad a drinker and a gambler. He lost me to Dean in a game of poker. Did not want to bet his car against Dean's.” A thought crossed the youth's face. “Dean thought it was a joke, till he woke up in the morning with my father gone and me still there.

He left me with a man he met the evening before.

I hope he wrapped his damn car around a tree.”

Pain and anger like this made vulnerable.

Morgan kept quiet and Sam looked him straight in the eye. “Dean never leaves me alone.”

“But that comes with a price doesn't it?” Morgan stated.

The young boy shook his head. “You don't get it.”

“Oh I do. You always had to watch out for yourself,” Morgan began. “And most of the times it was bad and sometimes it was worse. And then Dean took care of you and everything got better. The price must seem small.”

Eye roll, “Trust me, I am not that easy to win over. Someone who hurts me like that, wakes up to the pain of his sliced off dick.”

“I know he has not hurt you,” Morgan marveled over himself, how he was able to say that without choking on the words. This little boy had no idea yet what scars Winchester left on his soul. “The doctors have checked you out, you were not raped. Not physically at least. They confirmed what you are saying, that Dean had to have been very gentle with you. He did not restrain you, or hold you down, he took a lot of time to make sure your body would accept his. Any kind of force from his side or refusal from yours would show. He made you feel good, safe, he made sure you don't say no.”

All the while Derek spoke he could feel how deep this words effected the boy, he knew what would come next. Sam was not able to face his real feelings yet.

The boy looked deliberately up, rolled his shoulders back, stuck his chin out and attacked, “You do know, that with all your big words you do nothing but calling me whore?” He smiled a tight little smile. “And you don't even know for sure it was Dean's jizz you found on me _and_ in me. I mean, maybe I just fucked around, came home and crashed in Dean's bed.

It's not like he could bitch about that, 'cause of the many times we were teenagers and he came home smelling rancid.” The boy stopped to do a little shudder to the shake of his head. “God. He was out of control when he quit school. Came home in the middle of the night smelling like a whole brothel, he had not had the decency to shower before he fell asleep right next to me. Around that time even dad took my side when I kicked Dean out to sleep on the floor.”

 

Morgan sighed, sadness and frustration dominating his body language. Reid moved subconsciously closer to him. As did Hotch, only less obvious. They worried about him and while it had taken a lot out of Morgan to open up to the boy, it was not him they should be worried about.

“Every time I come close to a touchy subject this boy falls back into his safety net, pretending to be Sam Winchester.”

“It worked on Dean, made him protect the boy, treat him like family,” Rossi said.

“Yeah,” Morgans affirmation oozed with disgust, “Family.”

They had met outside of the interrogation room. Prentiss and JJ still teamed up against Winchester and one look at his body language made them all feel a little bit better.

The two women made further progress compared to what Morgan and Rossi had achieved. “Had he tried to flirt with them at all?” Morgan asked. Flirting was deeply ingrained into the older Winchester brother. Just as his need to make fun of those working in the law enforcement. He had not taken Morgan and Rossi serious.

“He tried to reason with them,” Hotch answered, “Alluded to their beauty and argued to be much more interested in them, than into children.”

“Bet he wilted like flower when they flirted back,” Morgan assumed.

“No, he didn't,” Rossi said. “If he feels threatened by sexually aggressive women, he does not show it. They had to stop, because he used it and played along.”

“Untypical for a pedophile,” Reid mused. “Most of them do not have the social competence to interact with woman this way. Look-” He nodded towards the glass.

“Ladies, why don't we cut the crap,” Winchester looked tired. “We can talk the whole day, being civil and everything and judging by the crowd we draw this is quite exiting for you Feds, but seriously? You don't wanna know half the things you ask me.

So why not spell it out: I am the lowest scum on earth.

You need it in writing?”

He sounded defeated.

Prentiss did not buy his defeat. Neither did JJ, “Don't you wanna chat with us anymore, Dean?” she said giving him the doe eyes. They had long passed the stage of flirting, this was supposed to anger him.

It didn't work, “No, but you Feds are so important. You sure have better things to do than to play Doctor Phil with me,” Dean stated unaffected, if anything there showed some of his self disgust through his smile again. “You want something, just ask for it. I am a very giving man.” The bantering attitude was a second skin that didn't fit anymore, too frayed, the face beneath too old, the emotions too heavy.

“What would Sam think about you replacing him with the next best boy?”

“Ouch,” Rossi commented Prentiss new attack. “Remind me to never make her mad at me.”

They all were surprised when Dean did not get angry over that either. “Sammy understands.” Had this man no fight in him anymore? Rossi and Hotch shared a look.

They had never considered Dean to be the dominant of the brothers, and now Prentiss followed that thought. “Had he picked the boy for you?”

Dean scratched his forehead, showing all signs of negation. “You're asking all the wrong questions, sweetheart.”

They had been right, Sam Winchester was dead.

“Maybe you just don't want to answer them,” Prentiss shot back. “Do you or do you not think Sam would be mad at you because you replaced him?”

“No.” The answer had escaped him before Dean had thought about it. Noting that, he took his time, reassessing his opponents before he spoke again, “Before Sam died he made me promise I would find someone to settle down with.”

Sam Winchester had known he would die. Interesting.

Prentiss smelled blood, “Did he pick the boy for you, or did you kidnap him on your own?”

Dean huffed a sad laugh, shrugged his shoulders and avoided eye contact. Maybe they worn him down a little bit too much.

“Come on Dean look alive,” JJ said. “You don't even defend yourself anymore. We know you didn't kidnap the boy.”

That peaked Dean's interest. “You do?” he asked. Hard to tell if he was upset over the boy talking to them. “He has talked to you?” Intrigued, not angered. “Has he told his story?” There crept a smile over Winchesters face. “Sammy 's great at storytelling.”

“Did you even ask him for his real name?” JJ questioned with renewed revolt. That smile made her want to puke.

“Oh his name is Sam. For real,” Dean stated with little nods. “Mad world, right?”

After that Winchester became insufferable.

 

The idea of the boy talking to them had fueled Winchesters resistance. Like they told him the best joke in the world. He would not stop grinning like the Cheshire cat and unnerved Prentiss and made JJ sick.

Both woman accepted the coffee and sandwiches Rossi brought them with the same drained expression. They had left the interview room with nothing, but the name of the boy. Garcia was already searching for boys with the name Sam reported missing in the last three years. But even if Winchester had said the truth, when Sam's story about his father was true, nobody had reported him missing.

“Dean said, Sam does storytelling,” Rossi tried an approach. “Maybe he is amused over us being fooled by a twelve year old. Think, he seemed surprised when JJ said we knew he did not kidnap the boy. Maybe the story Sam told us about his father is just that, a story.”

“No,” Morgan saw Winchester for what he was, a cunning manipulator. “He wants us to believe that, he wants to discredit everything the boy says. And stop calling him Sam.”

“Has Garcia found anything yet?” JJ asked.

Morgan shook his head. “Nationwide search for a boy age twelve going missing in the last three years? I don't need Reid to know the number is terribly high.”

“2001 the name Samuel ranked on place 26 of the most popular baby names. A stable position, which makes approximately twenty thousand boys named Sam around the age twelve, give or take a year, middle names not counting,” Reid provided and understood too late that Morgan's point had been that he had not wanted to know. “But not all of them are missing,” assuring words, “So the name could give us a lucky break.”

Things were looking bad when Reid was talking about luck.

Nothing new would be learned from Winchester. They had to make the boy talk.

Easier said than done, Morgan pointed out. The boy changed tactics so fast it was hard to keep up. He played protector and victim, innocent child and jaded adult without consideration to his plausibility.

He didn't really care what they thought about him, Hotch observed, he did not show the usual signs of shame and guilt of the abused.

“He just hides it better than most,” Morgan vindicated the boy and Hotch said nothing to that.

“What about his father?” Prentiss asked. She presented her idea and yes, it was a possible starting point. To make a child believe it's parents abandoned it, was the second most used trick to cut the child's ties to them. The other was to make the child believe it's parents were dead. So if the father had not abandoned the boy, if Dean lied, he could be the only thing with a deeper emotional import to the boy than Dean.

“One minor fault,” Reid pointed out. “We cannot prove to the boy that his father did not abandon him, because we don't know who his father is, we would first need to acquire the information that would lead us to itself-”, Prentiss stared at him, but then she nodded and admitted that the idea was faulty.

“With his violent history, killing a person is Dean Winchester's everyday business. So if I would be Dean Winchester and wanted to abduct a child...”, she trailed off. Obvious where this train of thought lead:

There was a good chance Dean had killed the father, made it look like he drove off and left Sam behind.

“And we have to consider Sam could have come to the same conclusion; on some level he has to understand how dangerous Dean is.”

“Don't call him that,” Morgan objected again.

“I don't know. It's fitting. He looks like a Sam,” Reid voiced his thoughts and was stared at, this time by Morgan. And Rossi, and Hotch, and Prentiss. “Maybe the boy's name triggered Dean's behavior. Or the other way around, he looked so much like a Sam, that-What!?”

“You will interview the Boy,” Rossi decided.

“Why?”

“Because you are young and nonthreatening. He can relate to you,” Hotch sold a partial lie. The truth was, that Reid, even after all these years remained to cause the Reid-effect, but over the years it had dimmed down to something homeopathic with the opposite outcome.

“Okay. But I'd like to do something different.”

“How different?” Hotch asked and learned he did not like the answer.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder:  
> This was future fic once...a long, long time ago, so it turned out to be complete AU for Supernatural; watch out for reasonable crack and unexpected visitors from happier seasons...what am I talking about? Happy seasons? On Supernatural? Smell you later, Biscuits xxxJo
> 
>  
> 
> The second Chapter is partially beta-read and as always the remaining mistakes are ours.  
> Personally I want to thank Emily for her comments and corrections, they were intriguing to read.  
> Sincerly, Francis

Reid had sat with Sam for an hour now and even though he himself had said that he didn't know what he would obtain from his questions, they all could see, it worked.

It worked so well, that they were in the same room with Reid and Sam, asking a question now and then. Sam reacted just fine: No hostility, no change of tactics every other minute.

All Reid had done was showing his interest in how Sam had managed to substitute for Dean's adult brother.

Not so much in a sexual way, Reid told Sam, he was able to imagine how that part worked. Rather he was interested in the other parts of their life.

Their conversation elicited something, they would have overlooked. The boy was not merely smart. He was a genius. A term not lightly used by anyone who knew Reid.

Sam told about how Dean had taught him how to read when Dean was only seven himself. A test, to see if Reid would correct him, say that it had to have been Sam Winchester who learned reading from a seven-year-old Dean.

Reid did not correct Sam and after a few sentences, Sam said it himself: Dean had done the same thing for him as he had done for his brother. Teaching him everything he knew. Educating him, not just training him for a battle against demons, but really teaching him things of interest for a young boy.

Sam proved to have advanced knowledge in biology and engineering. With all that came practical experience. When Reid tested him, Sam could describe how damaged tendons or how blood vessels would be stitched together. And the way he gestured was not lost on them, as if he had done operations his whole life, like a surgeon whose hands did the motions even in his sleep. Reid and Sam shared stories about stubborn old cars and their ticks. Even though Sam said Dean would never let him fix the Impala on his own, he seemed to know so much about the Chevy, he should have been able to rebuilt it without help.

When they had talked excessively about mechanics, Reid made a detour into mathematics, where he stayed, till Sam's knowledge reached its limit. Around that time, they realized how badly they had underestimated the boy. Mathematics was abandoned for chemistry and then physics magic with an abrupt jump into literature, specifically poetry by Edgar A. Poe.

Sam's education was not single edged, he preferred some areas to others, but all around he would have been able to begin a study in any field he would like to choose.

Reid knew enough about child prodigies to understand Dean's role in Sam's life. The kind of intelligence this young boy showed did not come out of nowhere; it had to be nurtured or at least provided an environment that had allowed it to nurture itself.

But from what Sam told, Dean had done more than that. He had loved Sam for his 'nerdish' behavior and no motivation worked like positive emotional reinforcement.

The explanation for Dean's positive reaction of Sam's intelligence was simple: Sam Winchester maybe had not been a genius on the level of this young boy, but in Dean's eyes he wasn't far off. And Dean's sole reason for having this boy around was to compensate for his loss. He had even gone so far as to inspire an interest for Law in the young surrogate. Even though this was knowledge Sam Winchester obtained without Dean, for they were not together in Sam's four years as a pre-law student in Stanford.

The young boy's level of knowledge in this area was hard to estimate, for he had shut down the second he'd caught on that Hotch was testing him. He redirected the conversation, asked questions, how and where Hotch had practiced law. The nature of his questions gave away enough.

Sam had gone to great lengths to emulate his namesake. But it had not been a hardship for him, actually the opposite. Reid identified the glow of a young mind pushed to its limits and beyond.

Not only had Dean Winchester found the right boy to recreate his younger brother, Sam had found a man who indulged his thirst for knowledge and treated him like an adult.

Even if Sam's father was alive, Sam's loyalty had shifted for good. He would follow Dean no matter what. Maybe this new bond was even so strong, it would survive when Sam would learn Dean had killed his father.

Maybe it already had. Sam was also socially apt and it needed a lot of denial not to see Dean for the ruthless killer he was.

In the light of this new insight, Reid did not know what to do anymore. Sam had bonded so deeply with his captor, he would not be able to form a healthy relationship with new parental figures. His intelligence would only worsen the situation.

A small voice inside of him stirred. Sam was not lost yet, but he would be without someone who understood him. The voice, which whispered that this someone could be him, sounded familiar to him. It was the same one that always asked, what if?

What if this unsub had not turned violent, what if he had been found sooner?What if this young man found someone, something to hold on, anything but violence?

Tobias could have been an authority in computer science, Owen had tested above standard for his age, as well as Nathan and Adam, they could have had a normal life, like Johnny McHale, before it was ripped away from him. What if this was Sam's last chance for someone to step up and save him?

What if this someone was him, Reid wondered.

“Dr. Reid?” the boy's clear bell-like voice startled him.

“I am sorry, I got lost in thought,” he apologized.

“How?” Sam inquired, “Shouldn't that be familiar territory for you?”

Reid needed a second to recognize the joke. He reacted with a smile but inside him something cramped. A long time ago Gideon had told him it wasn't his job to prevent people from becoming something, told him not to get attached, not to return Nathan's letters. But he was not Gideon's protege anymore. He visited Amanda and would continue to do so until he spoke to Adam again. He kept in touch with Owen and would have helped Johnny if there had been anything he could have done, anything more than giving him the phone back.

But this was more than writing letters, making phone calls and the occasional visit.

This was a little voice that told him to take a twelve-year-old boy in. Be a father.

Sam talked about his recent interest in languages.

Reid knew nothing qualified him to be a father. Nothing but the burning need not to abandon this boy. He could not ignore it. Not when he let his mind wander to the alternative.

Sam already knew how to build bombs and how to use all kinds of guns, he had dissected animals and Reid suspected Dean had given him opportunity to study human corpses up close. He was also manipulative and opportunistic.

He would stay in the system for some time, before he would vanish off the radar. Alone again he would devolve, fall deeper into the warm cushions of his already showing sociopathic tendencies, maybe become something worse than Sam Winchester had been.

Morgan came back. The talk with Garcia had been long.

“Sam?” he interrupted the boy and Reid's thoughts, “Can I borrow Reid for a minute?”

“Sure,” Sam answered and gave Morgan a lopsided smile.

Outside Morgan asked him, “Reid, how far along is cloning technology these days?”

“Farther than you think, why?”

“And how far along was it twelve year's ago?”

“Why---?” he drawled the question.

“Because Garcia found a match for the boy's fingerprints. She actually found it hours ago, but she needed time to make sure there was no technical error.”

“What has that to do with cloning?”

“The prints we took from the boy match Sam Winchester's.”

“That is-”

“Impossible, I know.”

“I wanted to say highly improbable,” he corrected Morgan. “Although we know clones would not have identical fingerprints, because the minutiae form randomly, as it can be observed in monozygotic twins, it is not impossible to have the same fingerprints as another person. Only very, very unlikely. In this case I would recommend applying the principle of _Occam's razor_ , where simplest explanation is most likely to be the right one.”

“Someone manipulated the data we have on Sam Winchester.”

“Not a very elegant theory, because of the bold-lettered WHY?”-Reid made it a rhetorical question by not taking breath in between his sentences- “But a lot easier to believe than that Dean Winchester found a boy vaguely similar to his brother in looks and interests, with the same first name and identical fingerprints.”

“Pathological attention to detail?”

“Hey, that works as an answer for both theories,” Reid amused himself over Morgans notion. “But obsessive compulsive disorder is one of the few pathological behaviors Dean does not exhibit.”

Morgan's phone buzzed.

“What's new baby girl? Miss my voice already or why are you calling so soon again?”

Reid observed him nodding along to Garcia's answer.

 

They had found themselves in the Sheriff's office around the table with the phone on it. Like demanded by Garcia they all listened, short of JJ who had talked Sam into having dinner with her.

“While I am totally freaking out over junior G-man's suspicion of meddled data, I can prioritize and give recovered information while I try to find out what the _hack_ meddled with AFIS.

Listen to the next break in this case: One of my parallel searches to who our John Boy Doe is, was the cases where these brothers messed around with kids. Just to see if he had done this before and found a case that did not seem so exiting at first:

Missing kids in May 2007, in Cicero, Indiana, all returned home safely. The name Winchester was mentioned in the investigation, but not as suspects. As too often with these two fiends, someone stepped up to clear their name. Sounds like a classic Winchester crime, but I thought to myself what kind of woman would take up the cudgels for two unwashed guys who probably had done stuff to her son? So I took a closer look at Miss Lisa Braeden and found that she moved not too long after the incident, and then moved again, and again, pretty cost-intensive for a yoga teacher. BUT, she had a second income provided by the boyfriend she and her son lived with in 2011. When I took a closer look at the boyfriend, all out of pure instinct, I gotta say, I found that he vanished. Just pooof!

The three of them had moved again and a few month later, he was nowhere to be found anymore in the whirlwind that is the world of trackable things out there. Just as you would find nothing on him before he moved in with Lisa Braeden.

Did I mention this guy's name was Dean Singer?

No? My bad. But maybe his first name had something to do with my gut-feeling.

I did a social network search and found photos of a smiling Dean Winchester at a neighbor's barbeque. So I can give a 100% validity that he played house with the Braedens for over a year.

I am good or what?”

The team had listened with unbroken attention. This brought a million new questions.

Hotch, always the practical one, asked the most important question, “Lisa Braedens son-”

“-Ben Braeden is not the boy you found, he with his mom safe and sound,” Garcia answered hyped up and ready to answer the other 999 999 questions.

“Does she have a history with domestic violence?” Prentiss asked.

“Nope.”

“Can we account for where Sam Winchester was at the time?” asked Reid.

“Good of you ask, this year looks like a dormant one for the Winchesters. In reality, if you only search for suspects that resemble Sam Winchester and leave Dean out of the picture: voila, dozens of cases possibly related to him. And I only say possibly because the evidence that pinpoints him are fragmentary fingerprints that after our last findings belong to a twelve-year-old.”

“What kind of cases are this?” Hotch wanted to know.

“Ahh,” a sound of Garcia coming to a halt in her other activities to retrieve information not right before her. “I can send-”

“Not necessary,” Hotch interrupted her. “I want you to take a look at them and tell me what you see.”

Silence, till her chippy voice was heard again:

“Some of these cases got overlapping timelines, so if he only committed -I don't know- every forth of these crimes he had a really busy year. And he seemed a bit more reckless than before; I can confirm five murders attributed to him where I have more than those frickin' untrustworthy fingerprints. I am talking eye-witnesses, blood, spit and more ickyness left behind.”

“He was acting out,” Rossi summed it up.

“He wasn't with his brother,” Hotch stated.

Prentiss shook her head. “That goes against the only thing we thought we knew for sure about them: That they are inseparable.”

Morgan dipped his head to agree to Prentiss doubts. Something was wrong here.

“That is why he was acting out,” Hotch reasoned. “Because his brother wasn't with him.”

“But why?” Morgan asked.

“Maybe Dean abandoned his brother for some reason.” Rossi threw in a thought.

“Or the other way around,” Hotch tested an idea.

“Abandoned, Dean turned to a woman he knew would not reject him, for she had proven her loyalty before,” Morgan said. “A woman who had failed to protect her child from him before. Is there a father listed for Ben Braeden?”

“No,” Garcia answered with a sigh. “Something I checked and hoped it would not lead to more sad discoveries. But with Ben's age and the parts of his mother's and Dean's history I cannot account for, it is not ruled out that Dean Winchester is the father.”

“One last thing, baby doll. Send me Ben Braedens picture.”

Hotch raised both eyebrows.

 

His decision to accompany Morgan to ask Winchester about Ben Braeden had two main reasons.

Hotch wanted to see up close how Dean reacted when he was asked about the year he had spent away from his brother.

And Morgan could use someone to cool him down.

Not that Morgan should be upset by the smug grin Winchester had plastered on, because he should know it was a defense mechanism.

“I gotta say, for all the sick stuff you did, you never really stuck to one thing, like nothing really excited you,” Morgan told Dean, “But young boys, they seem to hold your attention a little bit longer, don't they? A year, maybe two, how long is it with this one now?”

Winchester shook his head, bored. Morgan made him uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough. “You're like a dog with a bone. Don't you get it, no matter how many times you accuse me of being a scumbag, I - will - not - talk - about – Sammy,” Dean spelled it out for them.

“How about we talk about him,” Morgan offered and laid out his phone with the smiling picture of Ben Braeden on the display.

For the unschooled eye there was no reaction to be seen. A carefully blank expression, before Winchester answered, “Never seen before.”

“His mother tells a different story,” Morgan called out on his lie.

There, again, shorter than the blink of an eye.

Not fright, nor fear, something deeper more instant, primal. A sign of alarm. But before Hotch could consider the microexpression further, the blankness melted and words made it out of Dean Winchesters mouth, none of manipulation.

“She remembers me?”

It had been a few years back, not enough time to forget a man that lived with you for over a year, so what meant this question? Why would she forget him?

“You made an impression on her,” Morgan stalled in lieu of a real answer.

Dean visibly calmed himself down, it was subtle, but it was there. The way he paced his breaths, willed his hands to relax in order to relax the rest of his body and at last his features.

“So you talked to Lis, what did she say?” Fishing for information.

But Morgan was just as good at playing this game. “What you think she got to say about you?”

Dean kept his mouth shut, he seemed to know he could not win on this turf. His eyes fell down to the picture, then they shut. An act of distancing himself.

He shook his head and cleared his mind.

Then saw through their lie.

“She wouldn't talk about me over the phone,” he stated and assessed the situation. “You had no time to contact her yet. If you had had this before, you would have used it against me. You just now found out about them. Am I right?”

Before Morgan could react and safe their bluff, Dean spoke again:

“Don't do it, don't contact her.”

It almost sounded like a plea.

“Why?” Hotch discarded the bluff. “Why shouldn't we?” he did not make it threat, more an empathetic inquiry.

“Because I already brought them enough trouble. Leave them alone.” Winchester had made it a request, but he wasn't in the position to demand anything, so it came off - also - like a plea.

“What have you done to them?” Hotch asked in the same nonthreatening manner.

“Nothin'”, a tiny bit of rage, the way someone acted towards an unjust accusation. “You don't need to bother them, they don't know anything.” Shame, guilt, sorrow. Too much emotion to be held back by the walls this man had built.

“When have you seen them last, before or after your brother died?” he asked.

“Is this about Sammy?” Dean guessed correctly. “You want to know how I got the boy, I will tell you if you leave _Lis_ and Ben out of it.”

Again the affectionate diminutive. She was not some random woman to Dean Winchester. Not even one he fooled into trusting him, she was the mother of his child.

“I cannot promise to leave your son out of the investigation,” he said to draw Winchester deeper into his desperation.

“He is not my son.” Weak, no heart behind the lie and Dean knew he wasn't able to sell it, because he lost all pretense and pleaded, “Please, he is one of few things I left behind unbroken, just please don't do this to him. Don't drag him into my mess.” He reached out and covered the phone and therefore the picture with his hand. An authentic protective gesture. “He is not my son and he knows nothing about me, you will only confuse him and turn his life upside down.” Dean looked him in the eye, like we wanted to make Hotch retune by sheer force of will.

“If I have to do that in order to give another boy his life back, I will,” Hotch threatened.

Dean drew a breath and sat back, his hands in his lap again.

“I don't think that Sam has much of a life to go back to,” he said.

“His real name would be a start,” Morgan suggested.

“Never asked for it,” Dean replied. “When I picked him up I told him he looked like my little brother and if he would be okay with me calling him Sam.”

“Picked him up from where?”

“A street in Kansas city. He was so hungry he would have done anything, but he was just a kid. I didn't pick him because I'm into kids, I picked him because he looked like Sam and I couldn't leave him there.”

“So you saved him?” Morgan said.

“Oh come on,” Dean broke. “You're so disgusted by me, just get it over and sock me one, not throw this passive aggressive shit at me!”

“It would actually make you feel better,” Hotch deliberated. “You feel disgusted with yourself. How do you think your son would feel if he knew what his father did with a boy younger than him?”

A bodily shudder came over Dean and he shook his head. “What more do you want?”

“Enough with this bullshit, that you don't know anything about the boy!” Morgan put pressure on him.

But Dean just shook his head again, “I already told you-”

“You told us shit! You cannot tell me that you spent- what? A year or two with a boy, and don't know more about him than the street corner you picked him up!”

“But it's the truth!” Dean was desperate, he sought out Hotch for help. “I didn't want to know, what good would it have done to know the sob story that has driven this kid to run away from home? For me he was Sam and we were both okay with that.”

“So not once had he mentioned his past, in- How long was he with you?” Hotch asked.

Dean took a moment to think. “It's a year and four months or so. I drank a lot back then, it's a little blurry. But when we talked, we talked about Sam.

Hell, after some time he started to talk about Sam on his own. Stuff like... like he did remember. He said things like 'Do you remember that time in Black Water Ridge in Colorado, after I came back from college'. He read Sam's journals to learn that stories and he became really good at it. Sometimes he would hit the right note and I...” he trailed off.

“You could not tell the difference anymore,” Hotch ended his sentence.

“It was as if I had Sam back,” Dean explained in a plaintive voice and a sad smile in the end. “The mini version of him.”

 

“We should have stayed in there, we have him,” Morgan argued the second the door closed behind them.

“Not here,” Hotch told him. Dean still could see them. He lead the way out of the narrow room.

“It's good you came out, Garcia called again,” Prentiss informed them as soon they formed a circle. One of the deputies hurried out of the way, making a bad impression on how he did not try to follow their conversation. “She was self-deprecating over how she could have missed it:

Lisa Braeden had amnesia.

That is what Dean meant when he asked about her remembering him. Garcia did not find it because it happened half a year after Dean moved out. There was a home invasion. Lisa's boyfriend Matthew Taylor got killed and she and her son were unaccounted for two days. She turned up in a hospital a state over from her home. Her son and her had a car accident and only after the police caught up and questioned her about what happened to Matthew Taylor she was diagnosed with mild amnesia.”

“And they believed her?” Morgan asked.

“She really was in a car accident and suffered a minor concussion,” Reid established. “Which in combination with emotional stress can cause the brain to shut out the traumatic experience. Her story is plausible, but if she lied, she had lied to Dean too. Or his reaction would have been different.”

“What had he done to her to traumatize her so badly her brain erases him completely?” Morgan wondered.

“The more interesting question is, if it was really him who harmed her. This all presents itself like a love triangle to me, or more accurately a quartet,” Rossi stated and lost Morgan a little bit there. He explained his theory, “Sam and Dean part ways, it would make more sense to me if Dean was the abandoned, but that's secondary. He moves in with a woman and her kid that is probably his. Which would make sense because the kids in 2007 were not harmed, maybe because he realized one of them was his own son.

After a year of no violent activities, that we know of, Dean gets a visit from his brother. He moves his family, but Sam just wont leave them alone. To make sure little brother stays away from wife and kid, Dean joins him again. But he holds contact, finds out his woman is with another man, gets jealous and kills Matthew Taylor. Sam gets jealous because his big brother still cares about Lisa and takes it out on her.”

“So you do think, that Sam was the dominant in their relationship?” Prentiss said. Rossi nodded, “Don't we all?” he asked back.

“Their dynamic does not surface as the usual dominant-submissive imbalance would, they both showed alpha male tendencies. They both committed their crimes as equals and they both were able function without the other, at least for some time,” Hotch picked up Emily's thread and added his own reasoning, “But there was a slight imbalance. Grown up, Sam was taller and probably physically stronger. He was more intelligent than his older brother.

But most important he was the little brother, he lacked the inhibition an older sibling displays towards the younger one. Perhaps he figured out, at much younger age then we thought, how to take control of his brother.”

He had left out how he thought this happened, because that would take them too far into speculation. Prentiss did it for him, “Incest would be a way to take such control. All the guilt a responsible and older sibling would feel would have left Dean open to manipulation.”

“Initiating incest as the younger sibling?” Morgan had his doubt, in his opinion that was plain: “That's playing with fire.”

“We are talking about the Winchesters here,” Rossi reminded.

Reid could get on board with Prentiss' theory. “You sometimes see this in abusive relationships that start when the child is young and go on for long enough that the abused grow up to become dominate over the abuser, by using the needs of the abuser to coerce him. It is a rather uncommon, yet still classical scenario, prominent enough to make it into literature: Humbert Humbert felt like a slave to Lolita. In the end she was the one who held power over him.”

Morgan snorted. “Whatever has gone on between Dean and his brother. It doesn't lessen his responsibility for what he did now. He exploited a half starved child and reenacted his incestuous relationship with him.”

“Did he?” Hotch asked.

Morgan wanted to- but then his phone rang.

“Yes,” Morgan answered a lot less charming than he usually answered Garcia and glared at Hotch.

While Garcia talked to him his face softened. “I put you on speaker, mama. Tell them.”

“Bossman, I did it. Your nose is good, actually it is golden.

The little hacker who compromised the data we had on Samuel Winchester: Right in front of our eyes.

As you told me to do, I took a close look at John-Boy-wonder's laptop and I gotta say I'm a little impressed. Back in the days when I hacked the FBI data base it was a lot easier than today and this kid, he comes and goes as he pleases, for as I can tell, at least since this laptop was powered up,” She paused, “Ahmm...”

“Yes Garcia, you have question?” Hotch asked politely.

“I don't know if you realize how much work it would be to change the data to make it look like Sam Doe has the same fingerprints as the late Sam Winchester, so- Why would the kid bother? It's too much work for a practical joke on the FBI, even though us hackers are known to have a sometimes demented sense of humor.”

“Transformation,” Hotch answered and told the quintessence of his unspoken theory.

He expected it to be challenged and he expected Morgan to do it, who didn't disappoint. “Usually child abductors who want to transform a child into a specific person go to great length, but this is a little bit too much,” Morgan argued, “Winchester couldn't have thought we'd check the fingerprints and fall for the lie that this is his little brother, he is not that delusional.”

“You point it out correctly. What we know does not align with what we see,” Hotch said. “So there must be a error in our reasoning:

We assumed Dean Winchester tried to recreate his younger brother. But Dean is not dominant. He was dominated by his father and later by his brother. So the surrogate should dominate him too to fill Sam's place. The question arises how would he brainwash a child he does not domineer? Maybe we let our eyes fool us, again, like so often with the Winchesters.”

“What's your point Hotch?” Morgan did not like the foundation this new theory stood on.

“My point is, that young Sam is the driving force behind his transformation. Why would Dean compromise the data we had on his brother? He is not a hacker, that was his brother.

But if we entertain the idea, that the boy himself wanted to be like Sam Winchester, wanted to become him on his own initiative, it starts to make sense.

Remodeling the imprints someone left in the world.

Dean would not care about that, but the boy needed something solid and what is more solid than having legal prove you are the person you want to be? He was even able to revisit the database to ensure himself of the prove he created.”

“You do know-” Morgan said with barely concealed anger, “That you're not talking about an unsub, but a victim?”

“In order to survive many victims have turned to criminal behavior.”

“Exactly, for survival,” Morgan stressed the point. “What he did, since Winchester picked him up, was fighting for his life.”

“He does not seem like he is struggling. If anything he flourishes under the cover of Sam's persona. The trouble is Sam Winchester was not only a brother and pre-law student and a hacker, mainly he was a sadistic killer. Which is why I asked Garcia to check the boy's laptop for triggering material.”

Even without seeing him, Garcia knew her love came within an inch of making a good impression of what she called the wrath of chocolate thunder. So she hurried to produce the part of information her boss-man asked for.

“Sadly I found something,” she informed them. “There was a file named Research, it showed recent activities and held information of several crimes in different states. Two I have already scanned and came up with something, you wanna hear?” They probably did not want to hear. Especially after Hotch's theory, because it would cement it.

“Shoot Garcia, we are all ears,” Prentiss encouraged her.

“There is material of a twenty-four years old child abduction case. Four children from the same area in North Dakota were abducted in the springtime. The third child was recovered and told that she was lured away by a boy her age.

Now: Same area, same time of spring, this year: four missing children.

And before you ask, why we were not called there. When drilled, the local authorities claim an Agent Bonham was sent by us before they could contact us. Interesting name. Bonham. One of Dean Winchester's aliases, I guess. And before you ask, back in the day, the girl who was saved gave a description of the boy that sounds familiar too:

Twelve years old, brunette longish hair, scrawny, shabby clothes, pale skin.”

The second she made a pause to breath, Morgan jumped in, “So maybe Winchester used the boy to lure the kids away, like his little brother did back then,” he said, as if to show he could see what was happening and at the same time dared Hotch to turn this against the boy.

But it wasn't Hotch who said anything, but Garcia, “I hate to burst your bubble of believing into the good of children, but there is a disturbing thing. Not just a plain disturbing thing, a Chuck-Palahniuk-disturbing thing:

A personal note written under the research material. It's not part of the news articles or anything. It says,” she took a deep breath, “ _It's done now – No more little ones left – I refuse to call them what Dean calls them* - It wasn't an easy hunt, next time we deal with something akin I will bring earmuffs – the bitches screeched so loud I still hear a ringing sound – Dean turning up the radio to full force doesn't help either – Jerk – Gassing them would have done the job and saved my eardrums - I will recommend this practice – Just hope Dean's stupid name for them is no case of nomen est omen – Don't wanna kill anything that tiny anytime soon – Their tininess is annoying, like strangling little birds – At least when you bludgeon something of the size of a linebacker it's a workout.”_

It was not Dean Winchester who wrote this note, save he referred to himself in third person and wrote like he was watching himself from the backseat. Now that would have been Chuck-Palahnuik-like, Prentiss thought and stated, “Whoever wrote this does not only lack compassion, but is completely unable to feel any.” Twelve-year-olds were able to be cold, but not that cold. Not when they helped killing four other kids. The boy should have felt something intense: horror, numbness, lust, irritation-fine, but not annoyance. “Are we sure this was not written by Sam Winchester?”

“Absolutely. Time stamp is clear,” Garcia said and to get over with it, continued to tell her findings, “I found more on the boy. There was a case, the oldest in the file, that was about young women in Salem, Oregon going missing and found bled out. It was only two of them at first and then a triple murder, that does not show in the files. I researched it and found more un-pretty.

No signs of Dean Winchester this time, no FBI called in, because the local cops pinned it on known drug users living in the same abandoned warehouse that was site of the triple murder. But, and there comes the big But again, no pun intended, the two man and woman accused of the murders said all the same thing:

A boy, around the age of twelve left the warehouse, drenched in blood. Miss Eldridge, the most lucid of the three, recalled the boy to be scary. When she was asked how a young boy could be scary, she said he licked his lips, like he was tasting the blood on them, so she did not try to help him because he scared her. And he carried a large knife. Miss Eldridge's companion also wanted to have witnessed a knife in the boy's belt, while the other claimed it had been an axe and the boy was the son of Lucifer, because he was surrounded by brightness in the middle of the night.

His friend said also something about a bright light, but this time it was the UFOs, not the morningstar.

Those reports did not help them, because they substantiated their intoxication at the time of offense. It was dubbed a drug binge gone wrong and case closed.”

Prentiss cursed under her breath. Just once she would want to be wrong when someone gave her the chills.

 

As sad as it made him, Reid had to back up Hotch's approach. They had no chance of helping this boy if they did not find out where he came from and what exactly had happened to him.

“You don't have to agree with me on anything else,” Hotch told Morgan. “But you do agree with me, we have no chance to make the boy talk if you do not push him out of his comfort zone.”

Morgan shook his head. “Do you have any idea what this kid 's been through? Short of waterboarding nothing will push him to a limit where you scare him bad enough to make him talk.”

“Do you trust me?” Hotch asked. Morgan gritted his teeth. “Because if the answer is no, you wont go in with me when I make Sam talk.”

“His name is not Sam.”

“It is who he chooses to be.”

The chair Morgan had been holding on was slammed against the table. “If you really believe that...” he was too angry for words.

“This is not about what _I_ believe,” Hotch put it straight.

 

Alone, Hotch entered the interrogation room, they had left Sam in.

He pulled the door shut behind him. He had opted for Reid or Prentiss to accompany him, but Reid had declined. Prentiss wanted to observe with the others via camera feed from outside, she deemed her presence unnecessary. In her opinion Hotch would be able to play this without amplification, she agreed wholeheartedly to his theory, but he needed no backup.

Sam played with a Rubik's Cube JJ gathered from a helpful deputy. His fingers made the colors blur and he did not look at it at all. When Hotch sat down before him, he stopped, not finishing, and laid the cube onto the table. Only two squares were not in the right place. Either he left it unfinished, because he got bored after solving the cube for half an hour over and over again. Or he felt the tension in the air.

No matter why, it was interesting, that he had not felt the need to finish, Reid thought. It was only three more turns, a matter of a second. For someone who lived by the need to prove himself and his intelligence, disregarding an opportunity to do so seemed odd.

“Dean finally admits to the abuse. He understands now, that he only worsens his case when he lies to us.”

Sam let out a deep breath and took the exact route Hotch had hoped for: “How many times do I have to tell you: Dean would never hurt a child. I was not abused.”

“I do believe you. Dean is not the type.”

Now he had Sam's attention, because he said nothing, kept careful silence.

“But he is a psychopath, he made you realize he could turn against you any time. Which left you with no control, no safety.”

“He would never hurt me,” Sam said. So sure. Because he was right.

“Not anymore. You made sure of it.”

Silence again. The boy smelled the danger of the territory he was lead to. Hotch inquired further.

“How did you find out Sam had seduced his brother?”

The boy looked away over Hotch's shoulder to the camera, it's unblinking eye allowing them all to observe him. He knew he was played and he smiled. No answer, but what he didn't knew, Hotch did not need him to answer.

“Dean has not told you, not shown you, he has not laid a hand on you. That is what you've been telling us all the time. It wasn't him. You seduced him.”

Sam picked up the Rubik's Cube again and his hands were steady. Reid saw him mix the colors to near randomness. That wasn't as easy as it looked like.

“Are you aware what kind risk you took?” Hotch asked and did not wait for an answer, “To repeat a traumatizing event of his youth could have stressed Dean enough to kill you.”

Sam began a complicated solving process on the cube. He didn't even listen to Hotch anymore, Reid thought, maybe Hotch should know.

“But you knew he wouldn't kill you, you were too much like Sam and that was why he couldn't say no to you, why, even though it made him sick, he touched you.”

Sam made a mistake, a wrong move he corrected immediately, but it was his first since Reid watched him. He had been wrong, the boy had listened to Hotch's every word.

“But it worked, Dean broke down, did everything you wanted from him, everything to make it up to you. Because he thinks he raped you. He knows what he did was wrong. He is a crying mess-”

The Rubik's Cube shattered against the wall. None of them saw this coming, but now the rage was out and visible on Sam's face.

“Leave. Him. Alone.”

“Why because you are the only one who is allowed to use his guilt against him?” Hotch asked and directly went strong with his accusations, “You had us fooled playing a victim, even protecting your assailant in a textbook way. While it is you who enjoys these sexual encounters much more than Dean ever could. You like being Sam Winchester, not yet big and strong, but already compelling and cruel. Sam made Dean do much more than just commit incest.”

Hotch laid out the tablet and let the photos of missing children and the triple murder slide over.

“How much more do you think Dean will tell us, thinking he pays for what he did to you? This is just a beginning. He says he forced you to accomplice, but we know he could not force you if he wanted. And he doesn't want. He feels at home on his knees for Sam. It was so easy, because he wanted you to hurt him. Because it's all he knows, as it was all you knew, before you learned on him how much pleasure comes from inflicting pain.

Only to hear him going into details how you used him is scarring. What little humanity was left in this man you destroyed with glee. He admits to everything, damning himself to a death sentence, as long as we protect you from his desires.”

It was interesting, that this seemed to shake the boy more than expected. Especially because he had not disclaimed any of the accusations. He seemed torn, had to feel a genuinely loyalty to Dean, as well as the love for the power he found in torturing him.

“He has no idea you are worse than his brother was. Sam Winchester was born into this life. You choose it. You could have left Dean, he would have let you, he had prayed for you to run away from him, to leave for a better life.”

Sam's shoulders shook, drew in, protected his neck, a sign of defeat, submission. Hotch acted on it, before Sam could open his mouth and deny.

“Don't you want to defend yourself? Play on your innocence, your youth or your trump's card - that you never wanted any of this?”

The door flew open. “Hotch stop!”

“Not now Morgan,” Hotch brought his hand flat on the table. The bang startling Sam into looking him in the eye. “Do you really think your youth will protect you from prosecution? In-”

Morgan had Hotch by the collar and jerked him out of the chair, giving him no time to regain footing, slamming him against the nearest wall. “You will stop now.”

 

The only reason Hotch did not fight back, attacked by a subordinate and dragged from an interrogation, door banging shut behind them, was because the hurt in Morgan's voice had never been more raw. Not even when he stood before Carl Buford, facing his nightmare.

“We have talked about this. To make him see what consequences it has to be Sam Winchester is the only way to make him return to his own persona,” Hotch said when he was sure the boy could not hear them anymore. “You all agreed with me.”

“Not like this- I didn't agree to this,” Morgan was barely able to talk. “Do you have any idea what you just did to him? What you told him will not go away for the rest of his life, there will always be your voice telling him, he wanted it. How could you do this to him-” Morgan was so beside himself he rambled, “How... how can you?!”

“Because I look into his eyes and see something is not right.”

Morgan was taken aback by Hotch's statement.

“You damn a child because you don't like the way he looks at you?”

Hotch wanted to say something to that, but Morgan wouldn't let him, “You go anywhere near him again, I cannot be held responsible for what I do to you,” with that he left for the interrogation room.

 

Morgan sat down across the boy, who for the first time looked really upset.

“It's alright, Agent Morgan,” the allaying words crushed Morgan's heart a little more. The last thing he had wanted was to scare the kid with his outburst.

“It's not,” he told him in the most gentle way he could, “Nothing is alright about this. You shouldn't have to protect yourself, this nightmare should be over for you. But I know it isn't, you're trapped and you feel like there is no way to free yourself, I know.”

The boy's features were slack with shock. “You do,” he said, believing Morgan, hearing what Morgan really had said.

“I do. I know you can't speak up about what's been done to you, because it is a weakness. You can't even bear to hear it in your own mind, because you can't break down-” The boy made a futile try to interrupt, Morgan would not stop, “-Being down means surrendering all you held onto, giving up all that is protecting you. Because every time you cried or begged or called for help it only made it worse. No one can know about what happened, what really happened, you think you would loose-” Morgan drew breath.

“Agent Morgan,” he used the chance to interrupt. “You don't need to-”

“I know you never wanted any of this. You just wanted to make your life a little bit better, buy time, get a chance to grow older, to escape-” “Agent Morgan-” “Do anything you have to, hope for a time to come when you never have to think about it anymore-”

“Agent Morgan!” Sam had grabbed Morgan's hands, stilled his flow of words, “You don't have to tell me this. It's alright.”

Morgan shook his head. “No-”

“It's all true!” Sam stopped him, making all of them pause, even Hotch who saw it again. It wasn't just in the boy's eyes, it was in his voice, his choice of words, his posture, his everything.

“All that Agent Hotchner accused me of, is true to some extent. It was me hurting Dean, not the other way around. He hadn't wanted it, he couldn't even get it up. But with time I've worn him down, not even seduced him, but coerced him. I was desperate for his touch, to a point, where I threatened to leave him for someone who would want me. I used his worst fear against him to make him do something that killed a precious part of him: The memory he had of me when I was a child.

It was the worst thing I ever did. And that says something, considering I drank the blood of the innocent for the greater cause. I killed so many humans I lost count.

Like these three women, whose pictures are on Agent Hotchner's tablet, they were witches, but they were human. I do not believe in the death sentence and still: I stabbed them to death, because there was no other way. They were too powerful to be imprisoned. Old women who tried to save their life by killing young girls. Regaining their youth. My condition, the age regression was an accident, when I destroyed their altar. I do not pretend to be Sam Winchester. I am Sam Winchester.”

Morgan carefully pulled his hands out from under Sam's. The pain showing on his face was nearly unbearable to watch. Hotch regretted to let him face the boy again.

“I am so sorry, you think you fail me,” Sam said, “But you don't. This is not some kind of compartmentalization, where I try to overcome my trauma by taking on an alter ego.

I am Sam Winchester. Check my fingerprints, my DNA, -hell my family pictures, I look just the same again as I did when I was twelve. But I am not. For Pete's sake, I am in my thirties!”

Morgan gave up then.

 

When he came back to them, he only directed one sentence at Hotch, “You could have made him talk, that's what I hate most about this.”

He wasn't present when they debriefed. They had met a dead end with their interrogation. All that was left was to wait what Garcia dug up. And none of them looked forward to see hard evidence about what Sam had said:

He had killed.

JJ and Reid still had hope it wasn't so. The others, not so much.

 

 

Morgan hurried into the Sheriff's office.

“Garcia called on the landline,” he said and pushed a button.

“I-There's no - _**goddammit**_ \- check your phones, because I can't reach you on them and this bitch is hacking my computer right under my nose - Noo! No - No – **Nooo!!!!!!!!!!!!”**

“Garcia?” Prentiss asked worried.

“No hurry anymore crimefighters, now we have all day,” she answered oddly calm. “My computers just went blank, all of them. Does anyone know any good books? Because my world was thrown back to the dark ages.”

“How could this happen?” Hotch asked.

“I don't know. Correction I know, I opened an e-mail on Sammy's laptop, sent by H_G and soon after that I was remembered that there is this Hacker who uses the nickname Hermy, but only after a virus with the face of a well known Harry-Potter-character stuck out it's tongue to me!”

“Look at this,” Morgan said and showed his phone's display to them.

 _Please_ _hold_ ,

it read,

_your investigation is important to us. We initiate contact through our RL-agents in the foreseeable future._

“What the hell?” Rossi asked.

 

Outside the Sheriff's station two officially dressed men approached, one young and sharp, the other older and gruff in a dinky way.

“Agent Fitz and Agent Tran of the CIA arrive to safe the your day,” the older one mumbled in a singsong voice.

“For the love of Chuck, be quiet Garth and let me talk,” said the younger aggravated.

“Bossy.”

“That is because I am your boss.”

“Sure kid, whatever makes you feel confident,” replied the older good-naturedly.

 

 

“Agent Hotchner I presume?” asked a young man, lead in by the sheriff.

“Who wants to know that?” Rossi, to whom the question was directed, asked back.

“I am Agent Tran,” the young man held up credentials identifying him as an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. “This is Agent Fitzgerald,” he introduced an older man, skinny enough to win a size zero contest with Reid.

“Hello fellow federal agents.” He also produced, after searching his pockets, credentials that were checked suspiciously by Rossi. Agent Fitzgerald did not seem fazed by this suspicion or by the death glare, his younger partner shot him.

“It came to our attention, that you investigate the Winchester case,” Agent Tran informed them stiffly. “We are here to take over.”

After the whole team exchanged looks of disbelieve, Hotch stepped forward.

“I am Unit Chief Hotchner. Excuse me, but even if the CIA had jurisdiction here, what you could contribute to the Winchester case.”

Agent Tran nodded politely. “I see-”

“Do you have anything to do with the hacker attack to the FBI?” Reid asked and pressed the button that reconnected their landline with Garcia's.

The young Agent seemed surprised, but then ignored Reid's question in favor of answering to Hotch, “I did not expect you to just deliver the Winchesters to us. After we made connection with-”

“ _ **What is it?!**_ ” Garcia asked from the speakers, “When I find this ...woman I will wring her neck till-”

“This is your technical analyst?” Tran asked, a little concerned.

“Who is there?” Garcia asked alarmed.

“I am Agent Tran, Missus...?”

“ _Miss_ Garcia,” Rossi supplied helpfully, only not.

“Miss Garcia, I apologize for the premature but necessary actions taken by our head technical analyst. I promise there will be no data corruption. _Garth,_ ” the last word was quietly directed at his colleague. Agent Fitzgerald opened his jacket, revealing many pockets with many disposable cell phones. Choosing one, he typed a few words.

“Miss Garcia, your-” Agent Tran began.

But a Whoohhoo! was heard from the speakers, “They're up. My babies are alive.”

“Now if you would be so nice to establish a connection to the Director of National Intelligence. So we all can talk to him face to face.”

The Director of National Intelligence.

“Kid,” Rossi was the first to regain ability of speech. “Why not call the President when you're at it?”

“Because he is not my direct superior. And the name is Tran, not Kid.”

They had all their theory about this agents, from them really being CIA to them being accomplices of Dean Winchester, but this could not be true:

The Director of National Intelligence was no Agent's direct superior.

JJ pointed that out, adding, that his function was to direct and oversee the National Intelligence program. What Agent Tran just said made no sense.

“Maybe it will not make sense to you, but he will tell you my unit has authorization to take over any investigation concerning national security as we please,” Agent Tran replied to her doubts.

“Guy's, there is Director Clapper for you on Hotch's tablet,” Garcia informed them a little bit in awe. It wasn't every day, actually it never was, that she called the head of the FBI, CIA, HS and any other agency cool enough to be abbreviated.

They all gathered around the small screen, on which a friendly smiling bald man appeared.

“Good evening, director,” Agent Tran spoke up.

“Kevin.” So the director of National Intelligence was on first name basis with this young CIA Agent. “What can I do for you, I was called by the FBI. They give you any trouble?”

“No trouble sir, it is inevitable for these things to happen till our unit is fully acquainted. I just need you to explain our status to Unit Chief Hotchner. We have people here and would like to proceed. They were held for a whole day.”

Director Clapper gave curt nod. “SSA Hotchner.”

“Yes, sir,” not the tiniest shred of emotion was showing on him. His usual reaction to events out of his control.

“You're unit chief of the BAU, right. Are the good things I hear about you true?”

“I am not sure, sir.”

“An agent first and foremost, uncompromising, not much of a politician?” That raised a few eyebrows, not only that the director really must have heard of Hotch, but that this description made the director smile.

“You give the pencil pushers a hard time, I like that.”

There was nothing to be said to a compliment like this.

“Agent Tran has special privileges that give him free reign to order his people's affairs,” the Director explained. “Do not stand in his way. Do as he says, that is a direct order.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Morgan intercepted. “But a child's safety is at concern here.”

The director locked eyes with Agent Tran. “A child? You said something about our people being held?”

“Yes, sir, the two best freelancers we are lucky to have on our side, sir. Unfortunately, we are little behind in clearing our people's names, so these two still had an FBI file when they were sighted this morning.”

“Clean that up,” Director Clapper ordered jovially. “You need more people?”

“No thank you, sir. My technical analyst has formed her team three days ago. Such slip-ups will be a thing of the past.”

For the first time since the conversation began Agent Fitzgerald made himself known. “Yeahhh about that...”

“You have something to say, Garth?” the Director asked.

“Don't get me wrong, Chief, but Kevin here is a teeny bit too optimistic. We can only prevent _our_ people, those that I coordinated pre-MoL, from clashing with the LEOs. So it will be less clear circumstances - more chaos as usual. But hey, that is our specialty sir, so you can lean back and sing Hakuna Matata.”

“It is late, do you need anything else?”

“A jet?” Agent Fitzgerald suggested merrily.

“Is ordered.”

“With the shark teeth paint on?”

“Goodnight, Agents,” the Director said pointedly.

“Goodnight sir,” Agent Tran returned and Agent Fitzgerald did a little salute.

The screen turned blue, before any of team could object or ask if this was an April's Fools prank.

“Cool,” Agent Fitzgerald said, “Soon we will be flying in the Garthwing.”

His partner stared at him. “You are so embarrassing. I constantly have to remind myself that I need you.”

“I need you too,” Fitzgerald answered with a happy smile.

The whole team felt like they entered another reality and the madness decided to go one better, when Agent Fitzgerald's jacket started to play Hammertime. “Uh, I have to take this one,” he excused himself. “Supervisory Special Agent Willis...Yes, Lieutenant I sent them there...my best team...

_... a little unorthodox..._

_...we just want_ _to help, that is what the FBI is_ _here for, cut them some slack...._ ” Garths voice became inaudible.

“Did he just impersonate an FBI agent?” Rossi asked, curious as to how Agent Tran would explain.

“No, he is aiding in unlawful assumption of authority,” Agent Tran specified, then he looked a little guilty. “We are still a young and growing unit, but I can assure you, we know what we are doing. Most of my people have been in the line of duty for years now and finally they gained legitimacy. They protected the American citizens without expectation of monetary gain or acknowledgment of their heroic deeds. So you have to excuse, first and foremost, we protect our own. Would you now turn over my agents, please.”

When no one made a move to follow his request, he took out his phone. “I have actually the option to call the President, but at this hour I would like to refrain from it. Maybe from now on you make the phone calls. I am sure, my direct superior has informed yours about your new orders by now. You wanna check that?”

 

After an hour of checking and rechecking, they had to surrender to the idea, that the world had gone crazy.

Pulling all kinds of strings, JJ found out that the CIA fostered a unit, that no one knew what it's purpose was, but was backed by the White House. They had a normal budget, but limitless authority. Anyone who seemed to know anything pretended not to, but said they heard from reliable people that this unit did important work. Even after 9/11 Counter Terrorism had some limitations, but these people seemed to have none. Practically that was unconstitutional, but no one seemed to care.

So they had to stand by, when Dean Winchester was released into the hands of Agent Tran and Agent Fitzgerald.

They watched him with hawk eyes, but he gave no indication to know the two agents.

Only when Morgan entered the station's bullpen with Sam, Dean gave him a shy look, but Agent Fitzgerald drew everybody's attention away from Dean, by giggling. Soon he broke into hysterical laughter, actually pointing at the young boy. “Didn'...” he tried to say through his laughs, then waited, calmed down a bit and tried again, “Didn't Bobby teach you to steer clear of bottles labeled, DRINK ME?”

Sam's eyes grew wide and Agent Tran held out a placating hand. “It is fine, you are free to go. Charlie wiped your files off the FBI data base.”

Dean looked surprised for a second, then shrugged and mumbled an _Okay_ , but at the same time Sam mouthed a silent _How_.

“I thought Garth told you?” Agent Tran answered him irritated.

“What?” Sam asked, this time out loud.

“That we have gone official,” Tran explained. “When you reestablished the Men of Letters it allowed us to contact the right people. We are supported by the government now.”

“Certainly I told them,” Fitzgerald defended himself against another deathly glare of Agent Tran.

“Yeah you did”, Dean conceded. “But I thought you smoked the good stuff.”

“You knew about that?” the young boy stepped out of Morgans shadow, approaching Dean. Morgan held himself back, barely.

“In my defense, Garth asked me if we were still active and if not, if we would like to apply for a pension,” Dean grinned on his own joke.

“All in the attempt to decriminalize our people,” Agent Fitzgerald elucidated. “Kevin's mom is managing salary and the pension fund, if you want to collect your check, just give her a call.”

“Seriously?” Sam and Dean said at the same time.

“She... wanted to help,” Agent Tran ducked his head away embarrassed.

“No - seriously- the government is paying hunters?” Sam set the question right.

Hunters. So it was as they always suspected. The Winchesters were not the only ones.

“No the government is paying freelancing CIA agents,” Tran played with semantics. “Homeland Security had not the budget to take us under it's wing and FBI is under too much scrutiny.”

“Let me guess,” Dean said. “It's lousy payment?”

“No”, Fitzgerald replied. “Fair conditions for everyone. You ask very nice I will lend you my jet.”

“Aaaallllright,” Dean Winchester gave a long drawn out nod. This seemed to irritate him no less then it did the BAU team. “Now I get it. I am in coma, because the angry agent screwed up his courage and bashed my skull in.”

“Dean!” the young boy scolded him, and glanced back at Morgan.

“Maybe I am in the hands of a sadistic, deranged jinn,” Dean mused further.

“Aren't they all sadistic and deranged?” Tran asked very serious, as if Dean Winchester did not speak about mythical creatures.

“No I once was poisoned by one that gave nice dreams,” Dean explained. “I woke up beside the El Sol ad-girl and only had slight drinking problem.”

“And what, waking beside mini-Sam and having a severe drinking problem is a terrible dream?” Agent Fitzgerald mocked. “I think you just hurt Sammy's feelings.”

Dean Winchester choose this moment to take off his picked shackles. “I'll hurt more than just your feelings, Garth, if you don't shut up!”

Obviously Fitzgerald unknowingly crossed a line with his joke.

“I think we are done here,” Agent Tran tried to dissolve the tension.

“Yeah,” Dean said, treating Fitzgerald like he wasn't there. “Come on, Sammy.”

The boy took a step back, at first unnoticed by Dean, but not by them. Morgan took a stand beside him.

Dean turned around.

“Seems like he is not going with you.”

Whatever feelings passed through Winchester, he swallowed them. “Sam?”

“I think we shouldn't leave just yet.”

Dean's face fell.

But also Morgan was not happy to hear the _we_.

“Right now they are left in the dark. Do we want that?” Sam asked Agent Tran.

Who shrugged his shoulders and answered. “I don't see what good it could do.”

“They could be an asset, instead of an hindrance,” Sam said while he observed them. “They are nothing else but a pack of hunters, only that their monsters are human. Agent Hotchner,” Sam addressed him, “You have a sound instinct for the supernatural. I repeat the offer I gave you, this time without conditions. If you want to know the truth, the whole truth, I will tell you everything, right to the names of every person my brother and I saved and every law enforcement officer who already knows the truth first hand. You know- for reference.”

When this dark eyes mustered him, Hotch felt the same shiver as he did the first time he got a good look on the boy.

“Think about it,” Sam said, “We are staying in town for a few more days. If you do too, I will know you want to talk and I will find you.”

 

Their debate about staying was short, but exhausting. Morgan and Hotch agreed to stay, even though Morgan's reason not to let Winchester get away with the kid wasn't Hotch's reason to stay.

He knew, with a certainty he had not known anything that went against rationality before, this kid was not a kid.

Morgan called him crazy. JJ doubted his sanity less vocal, but she was very curious to gather more information about this new CIA unit. Even if they had not behaved so out of character for federal agents, her professional interest got sparked by the secrecy of her contacts.

It was Prentiss and Reid who did not want to stay to talk to Sam.

Reid claimed his girlfriend had only one more day till she had to leave for Europe and he wanted to see her before her book signing tour.

Not one of them poked at the obvious lie. Sure, he was so madly in love with her he was hopelessly behind on his reading material, because he made her read everything to him to hear her voice. But it was obvious _because_ he used her as an excuse. He would never do that if not to obscure another reason. He only talked about her in happy ramblings or when he was upset about something he did not want to talk about.

Prentiss was more forward with it. If there was real evil in the world she didn't want to know about it. She wanted to believe, that her friends from her youth had been sick, not possessed by demons, that those who were haunted, were haunted by memories and not by real ghosts. It was too much, it was a world of too much darkness for things to hide in and too little knowledge to hold onto.

She wanted to know the evil was mortal. That it bled and you could kill it.

Rossi had not said anything about how he felt or what he thought. He made a point by telling them, that it had not been a question: They would stay and they would find out, that was what they did. They maybe lost a lot of sleep because of it, but really? They would lose sleep over this case if they turned their back to it too, so what the hell!

 

 

 

 

_Quam angusta innocetia est, ad legem bonum esse._

 

What narrow innocence it is, for one only to be good according to the law.

Seneca

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *The monsters that abducted children, more lured them away, were called Troubled-Tribbles by Dean.

**Author's Note:**

> The story is beta-read, but in interest of progress, we encourage anyone who finds failings in speech patterns or dialect to tell us in the comments. Do not fear to give harsh constructive critique, gloves off, so to speak.  
> In contemplation of the saying Errare humanum est, sed in errare perseverare diabolicum  
> Sincerly yours, Francis


End file.
